by Sheila (30-B-2 FPE)

Field Trip Report

As readers of the Femme-Mirror should know, I have been getting around quite a bit this, fall and win- ter of 1963-64, and Virginia suggested that I might put down a few words to describe what I've seen. As my employer's files have now been enriched with some 20 pieces of deathless prose giving the technical part of the story (this is known as a market survey, and is the greatest invention since falsies), here is the feminine viewpoint. But first a few statistics; Mileage = 25000; Planes = 49, from a Beechcraft Bonanza to Convair 990s; Cover Girls = 7, FPE members = 25, other TVs = 25 in round numbers.

The most important point to me is that such a trip would have been inconceivable five years ago. The girls were there, all right, but no one could ever have found them; hidden, isolated, perhaps at best knowing one or two other TVs, and deathly afraid of exposure, they would have been as unreachable as the stars. Now it's easy, thanks to TRANSVESTIA's penetration of the veil of ignorance and fear, to find one's way around TV- land. The lines of communication stemming from Los Angeles alone would make this possible, but, busy little spiders that we are, we have set up cross-links that make a fantastic cobweb indeed! The effects of this are in- calculable, but I'm sure it's fair to say that the life of every TV this has touched has been changed permanently for the better. By permanently I'll go so far as to guess that for the next 100 years, at least, no TV need grow up in the sad state of fear, ignorance and guilt through which all the present readers passed. If I ever saw the signs of a self-sustaining chain reaction, this is one!

All this communication inevitably has produced all sorts of results. While we're spending a lot of time on gossip and other trivia, we are also sharing our experi- ences, strength and hopes with each other. By this means

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